Saturday, May 8, 2004

Busy Busy Busy!
For the last 4 days I've been attending the Drama Festival over at the University of Calgary. Well, 3 days and 1 evening. But still, hanging out there for a good ten hours for 3 days is pretty tiring.

Not to say it wasn't fun though. Oh, it was a lot of fun.

The first night we saw Macbeth. For those of you who don't know, it's badluck to say the name of that play in a theatre, or anytime before a performance (So, we all walked around calling it "The Scottish Play"). When you do accidentily say it (Like I did) you gotta head outside, spin around in circles while singing I'm a little Tea Cup. Needless to say, I felt quite embarrassed after that ordeal.

I guess it wasn't bad. I've read the play (It's by Shakespear, if you don't know), and it is really a wonderful wonderful play, but the version presented there (I can't remember which school did it unfortunately) was really really cut. What we saw was the bare minimum, just enough to make sense.

The acting was ok. I think that the actors jsut didn't put enough research into their lines, so they didn't sound like they really understood what was coming out of their mouths.

There were a lot of other plays, some good some bad. Our own "Tibetan Book of the Dead" did very well, we even got a standing ovation from about half of the crowd.

The ones that really stick out in my mind are "The Shape of a Girl", which was a look of how a girl was bullied since childhood and was destroyed in the end, narrated by one of the girls from the group which was doing the bullying. Girls can be vicious. What's really amazing is that the cast was like 16 people and the original screen play was a solo performance. The adaptation was amazing.

The best one though, in my opinion, was "Why Do We Laugh?". An old man remiscing about him and his wife growing up. We see them in their 60s, 40s, Teens, and as Kids. The actors were amazing at playing the same person, but making him or her each their own.

It took a comedic approach at first, and was pretty consitant with that (Especially with the kids and the teens), but also was very serious as well. Not serious as in it's all very heavy, very, well, serious. It was... Nice. That may not be a very extravagant word, but it's the best word.

It wasn't laugh out loud on the floor laughing, but it wasn't a tear jerker, with the lines said specifically just to get sympathy from the crowd, but it was just Nice. Very Nice. :D
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